Town & Country peeks in on this week's contemporary art sales at Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips.

Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman is an outlier. Nominally an Abstract Expressionist (although he destroyed any canvases that betrayed emotive brushwork), embraced by the Color Field critics (although he makes the rest of the gang look like fusspots), Newman's impact wasn't really felt until a generation later—in the days of Frank Stella and Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, by which point Newman was regarded as a relic. This zip painting, (created by ripping off the masking tape on an otherwise finished canvas to reveal the zip of original color beneath) is likely to appeal to a Howard Roark type who has just the spot for a stark, vast, sublime, ten-foot canvas from the artist's heyday.

Sotheby's Contemporary Art, evening sale, 7 pm, May 14.Lot 17, Onement VI, Barnett Newman (1905-1970); estimate $30,000,000-$40,000,000.(Sold for $43.8 million, to a telephone bidder speaking Italian, leading the New York Times to speculate that it was Miuccia Prada.)

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

This six-foot pumpkin repeats the black-and-yellow motif that Yayoi Kusama used for her Furniture Room in Tokyo. Kusama's stock is up, after her widely praised Whitney retrospective last year, and this most friendly squash looks like the tastiest item in the produce aisle.